Louise Bethune.
Chicago Public Library
As a young child, Jennie Louise “Lulu” Blanchard was teased by a male classmate, who jokingly proclaimed, “Lulu, girls can’t be architects.” The teasing was later recounted in the 1893 book A Woman of the Century: “A caustic remark had previously turned her attention in the direction of architecture, and an investigation, which was begun in a spirit of playful self-defense, soon became an absorbing interest.” That interest turned into determination, and Lulu proved that young man wrong by becoming the first woman architect in America.
Jennie Louise Blanchard Bethune was born on July 21, 1856, in Waterloo, New York. Her older brother died when he was young, leaving Louise the only child of Emma Melona Williams and Dalson Wallace Blanchard. Dalson’s ancestors were French Huguenot refugees, and Melona’s family came to America in 1640, landing in Massachusetts from Wales.
Due to her poor health, young Louise was homeschooled until she was 11. She couldn’t have had better teachers than her parents: her father was a mathematician and school principal at Waterloo Union School, and her mother was a schoolteacher. When Louise was 12 years old, the family moved to Buffalo, New York, so she could attend Buffalo High School, where she became known as “Lulu” by teachers and classmates. After high school graduation, Louise taught, traveled, and studied for two years in preparation for enrollment at Cornell University.
“Mrs. Bethune refuses to confine herself … believing that women who are pioneers in any profession should be proficient in every department.”
In 1876, she began work as a draftsman for architect Richard A. Waite and gave up her plans to study architecture in college. She worked from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM and the pay was low, but she had access to the office library. After five years as a drafter and assistant, she opened her own office in Buffalo. She was only 25 years old, and she was already the first woman architect in America. In December 1881, she married Robert A. Bethune, a former coworker, and he joined her in her architecture practice.
In the 23 years that the office was open, the firm designed 15 commercial and 8 industrial buildings, many schools, and several other public buildings, including a police station, a church, and a prison. One of Louise’s areas of concentration was public schools, though she refused to have her work pigeonholed. Indeed, an 1893 biography stated that “Mrs. Bethune refuses to confine herself exclusively to that branch, believing that women who are pioneers in any profession should be proficient in every department, and that now at least women architects must be practical superintendents as well as designers and scientific constructors, and that woman’s complete emancipation lies in ‘equal pay for equal service.’”
Louise opened her architecture firm at an opportune time: Buffalo was expanding its school system, and Louise designed 18 schools in all. Louise and Robert took all commissions that were available to them, and they designed a plant for the Iroquois Door Company, the Erie County Penitentiary women’s prison, grandstands for the Queen City Baseball and Amusement Company, and the transformer building that brought electricity from Niagara Falls to the Buffalo trolleys. The late 19th century saw a turn toward new scientific developments in sanitation, ventilation, fireproofing, and function, all of which were elements that Louise incorporated in her designs. The firm implemented innovative techniques and materials in their design for Denton, Cottier & Daniels music store, one of the first structures built of steel-frame construction with fire-resistant concrete slabs. In Louise’s school buildings, she designed wide hallways with two fire exits throughout all parts of the school, now a code requirement for all public buildings. Louise also used heavy timbers, layered hardwoods, and brick construction for fireproofing.
Buffalo’s Hotel Lafayette in Lafayette Square is Louise’s best-known building. It took six years to design and build, and cost a whopping $1 million. When the doors were opened in 1904, the seven-story, 225-room hotel was considered “one of the most perfectly appointed and magnificent hotels in the country.” Made of steel frame and concrete, the French Renaissance-style building was designed implementing new fire codes, a very important safety issue as cities and buildings were growing. Each room in the seven-story building had hot and cold running water and a phone, which were considered luxuries at the turn of the century. The landmark is now on the National Register of Historic Places, and a $35 million rehabilitation project in 2012 has restored the building to its original grace and grandeur.
Hotel Lafayette, Buffalo, New York.
Library of Congress, LC-D4-71141
Louise and Robert had one child, Charles W. Bethune, born in 1883. They employed another architect around the time that their son was born, William L. Fuchs, and made Fuchs a partner in 1890. The firm eventually changed its name to Bethune, Bethune, and Fuchs.
Louise became a member of the Western Association of Architects in 1885 and was elected the first female member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1888. When both organizations merged, she became a fellow of the AIA.
The third woman to become a member of AIA was a southerner, Henrietta Dozier. the first female architect in Georgia, Henrietta graduated from MIT in 1899 with a degree in architecture. her first office was in Atlanta; then, in 1916, she moved her practice to Jacksonville, Florida. Throughout her career, she hid the fact that she was a woman by signing her correspondence and blueprints with various names, such as “Cousin Harry,” “Harry,” and “H. C. Dozier.” During her career, she designed several churches, schools, banks, government buildings, houses, and apartment buildings.
Louise’s independent spirit extended beyond the realm of architecture. She bought the first women’s bicycle sold in Buffalo, and was a charter member of the Wheeling Division of the Women’s Wheel and Athletic Club. Miss Emma Villiaume, the captain of the all-woman Wheeling Club, recapped one of the group’s weekly runs to Niagara Falls:
It was a quarter to four when my alarm clock rang … It had been very rainy, and it was hardly light enough to see when I started for the rendezvous, followed by the fears and protests of my family. I found the other five waiting for me, fortified like myself with a cup of coffee and possibly a few crackers, and off we went, making good time out Grant Street and until we reached Military Road…. It was then about half-past 11, and after a dinner at the International we rode about Prospect Park, all around the islands and through the sightseeing roads. We all felt that we had never before seen Niagara so thoroughly, and that it had certainly been a delightful day.
On March 6, 1891, Louise spoke on the subject of women and architecture to the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Buffalo. Louise’s opening statement noted that she had been invited to speak on “Women in Architecture,” but she changed the title to “Women and Architecture.” She explained, “In order to have any topic at all, we must talk of women and architecture, assuming a connection which it is hardly safe to assert.”
She felt that at the time there was a need for women doctors and women lawyers; but, she said, “There is no need whatever for a women architect. No one wants her, no one yearns for her, and there is no special line in architecture to which she is better adapted than as a man … [the woman architect] has exactly the same work to do as a man. When a woman enters the profession she will be met kindly and will be welcome, but not as a woman, only as an architect.” Louise was trying to say that women are no different than men, and she felt there was no need to differentiate between female and male architects. In entering the field of architecture, she asserted, men and women were on equal playing fields.
Louise’s discomfort with women’s place in the field of architecture came up again during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Held in Chicago, the exposition introduced 27 million visitors to the newest innovations of the time, such as the Ferris wheel, the zipper, Cracker Jack, and many others. Chicago’s architects organized and designed the “White City,” made up of more than 600 acres of buildings and settings that fueled imaginations for decades. The floor of one hall alone covered 32 acres. The buildings were designed by many pioneers of 20th-century architecture, all of whom were chosen by appointment: Daniel Burnham, John Root, William Jenny, Louis Sullivan, and others. Two buildings from the 1893 Exposition remain standing today: the Palace of Fine Arts, which now houses Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, and the World’s Congress Auxiliary Building, which houses the Art Institute of Chicago.
Additionally, the fair’s 117-member Board of Lady Managers decided to construct a Women’s Building to showcase the architectural achievements of women, and they held a competition to select a woman architect for the project.
Louise and many other AIA members boycotted juried competitions—including the competition to design the Women’s Building—because the judges were generally inexperienced in reading architectural plans. This led many judges to champion buildings that ran over-budget and could not be built. Even worse, on occasion, a political favorite would be awarded the contract over a more suitable architect.
The woman who won the design competition for the Columbian Exposition’s Women’s Building was 21-year-old Sophia Hayden. Born in Chile, Sophia was sent to live with her grandparents in America when she was six years old. Sophia was interested in architecture in high school, and she went on to become the first woman to graduate with a degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The president of the Board of Lady Managers for the exposition was Bertha Palmer, wife of a wealthy dry goods merchant. Sophia soon learned that Mrs. Palmer had invited her high-society friends to donate architectural elements for the building. When Sophia tried to explain to Mrs. Palmer her design for the building and why these random donated elements would not work, Mrs. Palmer fired her. Many architects defended Sophia, but the experience soured her on architecture, and she never returned to it.
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was a turning point in the women’s movement. The Women’s Building, designed by architect Sophia Hayden, showcased and symbolized the importance of women. The vast array of exhibits displayed women’s progress from primitive to modern times in the arts, crafts, sciences, education, and labor. The building’s library of books written by women contained more 7,000 books from 24 nations.
Over 150,000 people attended the new World’s Congress Auxiliary Building, now the Art Institute of Chicago, to participate in the seven-day World’s Congress of Representative Women. Five hundred delegates representing 27 countries and 126 organizations attended 81 meetings. More than 330 women, including Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, addressed the Congress.
The competition was even more insulting given that the winner would receive an award ofjust $1,000, one-tenth of what each of the men were paid for their “personal artistic services.” Plus, some architects may have reduced their fees in order to get appointments, another opposition of AIA guidelines. Louise was the only architect to protest on this issue. In her refusal to compete, she made a plea for equal pay for women. Her actions were likely influenced by the women’s suffrage activities in upstate New York. The site of the first women’s suffrage convention in 1846 was a stone’s throw from her hometown of Waterloo, in Seneca Falls, New York. Louise was passionate and outspoken on the broader AIA principles of equal pay and ethical treatment of all architects. She did not need the publicity of the World’s Fair commission to validate her work.
In 2013, at age 23, Rosannah Sandoval achieved the title of youngest licensed architect. Rosannah explains, “Since I can remember, I cared about built things and the way light falls. About color and shapes and simplicity. Before I knew of ‘architecture’ in the formal sense I was drawn to the action of making and realizing ideas through materials. I began architecture school in Alabama and finished in San Francisco at 18 years old.” She’s currently an architect in Perkins + Will’s San Francisco office.
Louise was encouraging when she spoke to the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in 1891, and she urged women not to settle for lower-level tasks but to be ambitious—to reach higher and do better. She explained:
The total number of women graduates from the various schools of the country can hardly exceed a dozen, and most of these seem to have renounced ambition with the attainment of a degree, but there are among them a few brilliant and energetic women for whom the future holds great possibilities. There are also a few women drafting in various offices through the country, and the only respect in which they fall below their brothers is in disinclination to familiarize themselves with the practical questions of actual construction. They shirk the brick-and-mortar, rubber-boot, and ladder-climbing period of investigative education, and as a consequence remain at the tracing stage of draftsmanship. There are hardly more successful women draftsmen than women graduates, but the next decade will doubtless give us a few thoroughly efficient architects from their number.
Louise’s name was still listed in the business section of the Buffalo City Directory until 1910, though she moved into the home of her son in 1907. Louise died on December 18, 1913, at age 57.
LEARN MORE
Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, Louise Bethune Exhibit Interactive Video Tour, http://buffalovr.com/bech/index.html
The First American Women Architects by Sarah Allaback (University of Illinois Press, 2008)
From Craft to Profession: The Practice of Architecture in Nineteenth-Century America by Mary N. Woods (University of California Press, 1999)